Short Shorts... Christian Sloganeering, Inspiration, Revelation, & Universalism

Short Shorts... Christian Sloganeering,

Inspiration, Revelation, & Universalism

kitcshe - examples of sloganeering

What is Kitsch?

Well, it's NOT the Canadian actor Taylor Kitsch... he's cool.

Art as Kitsch

It seems religious kitsch is everywhere on social media regardless the religion or faith. Here, I ask the question whether it is useful or not? Offensive? Helpful?

I suspect the answer lies in the eyes of the beholder as it would with any display of art...

...and also what the artist wishes to communicate to us about their faith or beliefs.

Some artistic kitsch I like... It may make me laugh, cry, be cynical, or be uplifted by it.

The ones displayed below I generally don't like though I realize they are telling us to be thoughtful of how Christian behavior to be loving, just and wise, and to emissaries of Jesus wherever we go.

On Parenting

In the case of raising and teaching little kids I'd like to see less abject brainwashing and more liberty for them to be directed to ask better questions when trained up in the household of their parents.

Children are innocent souls and if they are allowed, a bit of childhood respite from the wickedness of the world would be nice to be encouraged at all times.

And when approaching the subject of God as they grow older I think sets them up for good or for ill to be worked out the rest of their lives. Hence, a bit of caution to religious parents on the energy of their beliefs. Allow children to breathe a bit. Become themselves a bit. Simply watching you will be instruction enough when the time comes to verbalize wisdom and beliefs.

I love children and always wish to error towards love, patience, broad-mindedness, and good will. We each need wisdom when it comes to children... and with that wisdom we might learn ourselves and share it with those around us.

R.E. Slater

January 18, 20224

Defined

Dictionary

Definitions from Oxford Languages

kitsch /kiCH/ 

as a noun

art, objects, or design considered to be in poor taste because of excessive garishness or sentimentality, but sometimes appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.

• "the lava lamp is an example of sixties kitsch"

as an adjective

considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way.

• "the front room is stuffed with kitsch knickknacks, little glass and gilt ornaments"

• a tacky or lowbrow quality or condition.

KITSCH

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

• This article is about the art term. For other uses, see Kitsch (disambiguation).

• "Tacky" redirects here. For other uses, see Adhesive and Tacky (song).

Kitsch (/kɪtʃ/ KITCH; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal taste.

The modern avant garde traditionally opposed kitsch for its melodramatic tendencies, its superficial relationship with the human condition and its naturalistic standards of beauty. In the first half of the 20th century, kitsch was used in reference to mass-produced, pop-cultural products that lacked the conceptual depth of fine art. However, since the emergence of Pop Art in the 1950s, kitsch has taken on newfound highbrow appeal, often wielded in knowingly ironic, humorous or earnest manners.

To brand visual art as "kitsch" is often still pejorative, though not exclusively. Art deemed kitsch may be enjoyed in an entirely positive and sincere manner. For example, it carries the ability to be quaint or "quirky" without being offensive on the surface, as in the Dogs Playing Poker paintings.

Along with visual art, the quality of kitsch can be used to describe works of music, literature or any other creative medium. Kitsch relates to camp, as they both incorporate irony and extravagance.

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Christian Beliefs

 

I had two reactions to the pictures above and below...

First the con... however I read this bit of nonsense it's still crap. If religion isn't true and gets exposed by science than let's put faith to death immediately. But if religion can survive the true truths of the universe than just maybe its metaphysic might be true too. Never be afraid to autopsy your faith. We want a living faith... not one that is dead and fighting for its zombie-self to manipulate and control our agency! - re slater

Now the pro... as people of science-and-faith we are to live in the present, not flee from difficulties... especially as presented by religious zealots defending an idolatrized faith. If prophecy is in any sense alive today as I think it is, we stand up and tell (forthtell, NOT foretell) our generations it's goods and bads, pros and cons, about itself. We don't stand mum and hope to leave disruption. Esp against sin and evil whether birthed by a church gone bad or leaders turned rotten. - re slater

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Bench Pressing with Rance

Subject: Universalism

Ok, warning. A good many of my friends may not want to read this. And I admit I sound pretty self-righteous, but here goes....

Today, I met and talked with a pastor who serves a non-denominational church in Alabama who only a few months ago became a persuaded Christian universalist.

He, like me in a previous life, came from the ‘free grace’ movement (names like Charles Ryrie, Zane Hodges, Bob Wilkin, etc) and in fact his church was part of that movement. We both agreed that, despite its name, it is one of the most narrow and doctrinally legalistic theological groups around. In reality, ‘grace’ is reduced to an abstraction and salvation is reduced to something like a commercial transaction. Unless you get all the t’s crossed and i’s dotted in the ‘faith vs works b.s.,’ you’re probably not saved, according to them.

There are approximately 8.1 billion people living on earth right now. So your chances of ‘going to heaven’ (as they put it) are extremely thin. Billions of people will roast forever according to these wacko beliefs.

From my research there are somewhere between 3.9 and 7.7 million Evangelical Christians in the world. That’s a mere 4-7% of the world’s billions of people who ever end up in heaven. By the time the ‘grace movement’ people get through with their nitpicking, only a fraction of those who identify as Evangelicals will be saved. How crazy is this? Plenty, if you ask me.

Evangelicals believe they are the only religious people on earth who will be saved. In general, Catholics aren’t ’really saved.’ Liberal and progressive mainline Christians arent saved. And certainly those Orthodox and Coptic Christians aren’t either. Muslims, ditto. Hindus, ditto. Buddhists, ditto.

And it gets even more depressing still since most Evangelicals believe in a literal hell. This was one of the main reasons I departed from Evangelicalism. I could no longer tolerate this narrow view of the world informed by a legalistic narrow view of the gospel.

There’s no good news at all in this kind of Christianity. It’s 99% bad news. Who could begin to love a god who is willing to create children made in his own image only to condemn billions of them forever? Not me, thank you very much.

I was schooled in this stuff, brought up in a Southern Baptist context and then trained in fundamentalist colleges as a young man. But relatively speaking, it didn’t take me long to feel increasingly uncomfortable with such nonsense.

My deconstruction began nearly 40 years ago. I haven’t de-converted from Christian faith by any means, but after all these decades my faith looks very different now than it did back then.

As my new pastor friend told me today, ‘everything looks different now. I view people differently. I see God differently. And once I understood universal salvation, I saw it everywhere in the Bible.’

I had to agree.

- Rance, 1.17.2024

Comment 1

I think you hit this spot on Rance. Might I publish it on my site? As always, I'll add a few thoughts too. You're my hero! BTW, I left one church after 27 years as I had become tired of my fellowship's incessant judgmentalism of others-not-like-themselves.

I couldn't evangelize for God, or bring converts into the church, if the church wasn't going to provide them with a nourishing, enriching fellowship as vs some imagined legalistic interpretation as to what they thought was holy or not holy.

To this day connecting divine sovereignty to power and determinism curdles my stomach. Divine sovereignty is always about divine love working with creation towards blessed, redemptive ends. Not power. Not wrath. Not hell. Not Christian inquisitions.

Thx again. - re slater

Reply: Rance - "Of course, brother."

Comment 2

by RRW

Hi Rance. I don't think you sound so much self-righteous as misinformed. I read a lot of people saying things about "Evangelicals" that aren't necessarily and definitely not universally true. I tend to distinguish Evangelical from Fundamentalist, though I recognize considerable overlap in many areas of thought.

My theological education started around Fuller Seminary (progressive? non-denominational Evangelical) and was consolidated at Regent College (also non-denominational, and very ecumenically diverse) as an Anabaptist. I suppose I'm something like a free-will baptist now, but I've always been rather iconoclastic, rejecting every post-biblical human tradition and line of thinking I could identify. I am not dogmatic about much except insofar as I am committed to biblical revelation as exemplified by apostolic teaching as represented by the canonical texts of the Old and New Covenants.

Abandon biblical revelation and you are on your own. If we are all on our own as to what truth is we are no longer thinking and acting as followers of Christ. He is our Lord; what he said as remembered and recorded by those who knew him best must be what we believe or we have departed from faith in him. If we recreate God in our own image however we see fit we are no longer fit for eternal life with him.

Universalism is one of those ways people impose their own thinking on the gospel as received. The words of Jesus are a plain refutation of that belief; eg., separating the sheep from the goats simply can’t be ignored as irrelevant here. And there is a lot more you have to excise from scripture to make the case for God’s eventual inclusion of everyone as members of His family. Someone in the comments mentioned that universalism results in monism, or in other words a deterministic world view. God would have to coercively override the will of those he created with free will by forcing them to accept him as God.

At some point our doctrines, if they are derived from scripture, have to all be correlated and coherent, otherwise they are not reasonable. I think it is not only possible but necessary for Christian teaching to be reasonable and coherent. That doesn’t mean the same as “logical” because a logical system requires more than humans are capable of (too much to explain that here, but ask if you want clarification). I think the Bible provides a coherent structure of beliefs if we mere humans don’t force it into our own distorted ways of thinking, which are then inherently incoherent and contradictory whether we realize it or not. I think that eternal conscious torment (torture!) is not a biblical doctrine. The only reasonable alternative is something like conditional immortality, with the expectation that some form of conscious and appropriate (just!) punishment is what scripture teaches, and then comes the “second death” of annihilation (the cessation of conscious existence) for the unfaithful and unbelieving.

Scripture does not teach that humans are immortal because we are created in the image of God. In fact Genesis teaches that because we have rejected the will and commandments of God we have lost the potential for immortality. The Old Covenant says we lost immortality and the New Covenant says we can regain it through faith in and obedience to Christ. People do not have God’s Spirit dwelling in them by nature; believers in Christ receive new life through the gift of Holy Spirit. Believe the Good News and you will be saved.

Reply by Rance

Richard, I have been very careful to build my faith in ultimate reconciliation for all on the Bible. A good case can be made for it, I assure you. I don’t even know where to start but simply to say it is how one reads scripture. The number of texts that explicitly state it are amazing.

Reply by RWW

Is there not an inherent conflict in proposing that the Covenant can be regained "through faith in and obedience to Christ" and "Believe the Good News and you will be saved?"

Reply by re slater

I no longer can read the bible as a "one-time" revelation. I believe the only kind of communication God provides is one that is daily and constant.

When I read the bible I read how past cultures thought about God... especially the Jewish culture. Jesus did too and had to correct Second Temple Judaism's covenantal legalisms of the day.

I feel much the same way....

God is a God of love... NOT a God of wrath and hate. That's what we do to one another when failing to love one another and creation-around-us again.

Further, Jesus revealed this loving God he called Father not with a sword but with targeted teaching on divine love and Spirit enablement.

Today, Christianity may simply expand the doctrine of inspiration to discover God never stopped talking to our hearts, minds, and souls by study, fellowship, experience, and history. 

If you wish, we might describe these events as General Inspiration as versus Special Inspiration... but when reading the bible it seems to me that all is generally inspiration and never one-on-one audible discussion except in the Christ-event when God became man.

As corollary, this would mean that the Christian commentaries, stories, and bios we read are from people moved perhaps a bit, perhaps a lot, or not at all, by the Spirit of God. To discern whether their words are from God I ask myself if God's love is at the center of the conversation and in their works. If not, they may have some things to say but I then read such beliefs in a different light as more human than divine. Some of which may be really helpful and some of which is complete rubbish.

How people think of God and act out their faith tells us a lot about the God they believe in.

For myself, divine love displays itself in acts which are healthy, healing, and redemptive.

When I read of God by those who push protestations, defensive apologies claiming biblical authority, or are generally off-putting to those around them, I read of people trying to push their idea of God on others. An idea which may be either good or bad. But love must always be the outcome as it must be the beginning and middle of any conversation.

As to the doctrine of hell it is what we do to one another rather than a place a wrathful God puts you in. Always remember, God is not hell nor is fellowship with God through Christ anything but redemption working itself out through us. And for the unbeliever, pagan, or non-Christian (my preferred term) God will always be a God to them as well despite religion or belief.

So why teach hell?

Well, that's the question isn't it... if there is no hell as the bible says there is... or as its Jewish culture in the first century may have believed; ...and certainly in what the early, middle, and late Middle Age church taught after (Catholic?) Dante's description of hell in his Divine Comedy of Hell's Inferno (published c.1321)... then what do we do with hell?

For myself, it is how we act towards one another and to nature around us. It is a description of our relationship with one another individually, familiarly, societally, and globally. Relationships are not places there are esoteric. And the pain and torture of a soul rueing life and troubles aptly describes a soul burning under the sin and evil caused.

The only place I find resolvement is in Jesus Christ's and the hell he took upon himself for us as God's sacrificial Lamb. Who served as our Atonement and Redeemer by the force of his life and death and resurrection. For without the resurrection, says the Apostle Paul, Jesus' death would not be legitimate. But with Jesus' ascension and transfiguration as the first fruits of salvation, we may find in Jesus One who will take our past, forgive it, and begin healing those of us seeking forgiveness and transformation.

Next topic...

As a former fundamentalist and later conservative evangelical I have to call my faith out. I've leaned into my original Baptist roots into Arminianism (free will) and thrown out Calvinism (divine determinacy).

Then expanded the former to incorporate and Open and Relational Theology.

And finally, I've removed the church's Westernized (Greek Hellenism) bias towards doctrine and replaced it with Whitehead's process philosophy and Cobb's process theology.

Why?

• Because I can remove the limitations of Western philosophical theology upon church doctrines and traditions. It also allows me to freely use redactive tools upon the ancient biblical text to expand its godly content and to apply a loving divinity which is never absent of us.

• Which is also why divine inspiration and revelation are important. If kept as a one-time reveal than God has bound us as God has bound God's Self. But I don't think God works this way... an imminent, intimately-near-to-us-never-to-leave-us God is always speaking, revealing, and inspiring. Some get it, many don't. Some get a bit of it while others make a "mash" of it.

• When I read inspiring novels or fiction; see illuminating art pieces, paintings, and sculptures; hear the joy filling within a good rock opera or punk rock piece; or witness architects and landscapers weaving buildings and gardens around light and sound; I behold lively works of divine inspiration such as in the American Constitution with it's Bill of Rights. Public documents which give people liberty, personal rights, freedom, justice, and equality.

• God is present and is presently doing what he can when his creation yearns to speak, be, and breathe atoning redemption and transfiguring healing to all.

Hence, at the center of love is:

• humane and humanitarian forms of social justice;

• intersectional faiths (certainly non-Christian faiths don't have Christ but in Process thought we can emphasize a redemptive center); and generally,

• behave in progressively liberating norms of behavior with one another while abiding to love and covenantal integrity with one another.

Such thoughts never rests easily upon a Westernized conservative evangelicalism as its newer, postmodernal form of progressive evangelicalism can attest. But when uplifting Reformed and Evangelical doctrinnaire into Processual Theology's realms we may liberate bad ideas of God and judgment and recover the good news which is in Jesus anew. This, to me, is invaluable.

Lastly, if God is what evangelicalism says God is - whether Calvinistic or Arminian - than such a God is not worth following. And just like ancient man's ideas are always reforming the primal questions of purpose and destiny, so too those divinely driven burdens ask of God today to reveal a better Christ and more humane faith than in times past or present. Amen

Comment 3

By CM

I think people assume all forms of universal salvation are the same. The ultimate redemption that Brad Jersak, Chris Green and others put forward is one that has been in the historical church family all along. It includes judgement and "hell" but just sees these as penultimate not the final word. Can God's Love really fail? Will Jesus be all in all of will he not?

Reply by Rance - Exactly.

Reading the Bible from the Eyes of Love

German Theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg

Amazon link

How deep has Pannenberg's influence been on American theology? Which particular ideas or themes from his work have been most pervasive to Ameri­can thinkers, and which have encountered the greatest resistance? What implications does his work have beyond explicitly theo­logical contexts--e.g., for philosophy, ethics, environmental concerns, political ac­tion, and the natural sciences? What new forms have his ideas taken as they have been adapted to fit the very different context of American theology?

The authors of the twelve critiques in this vol­ume represent a broad cross section of American thought on religion. The essays cover virtually all of the major areas in which Pannenberg has published. An intro­ductory survey provides a comprehensive overview of the critical literature on Pannenberg from the early 1960s to 1986. Together, the essays represent an ac­curate barometer of the influence Pannenberg has had in America, as well as the sorts of reservations that the English-speaking world brings to his work.

It has now been many years since Pannenberg's first visit to the United States. At that time the discussion with Pannenberg fo­cused on the radically historical character of his proposal for theology, centering around revelation and resurrection. In the meantime, Pannenberg's thought has ex­panded almost encyclopedically into most of the major disciplines studied in a modern university. Without doubt the most comprehensive theologian at work today, his place in the history of twentieth-century theol­ogy is well assured.

Amazon link

Since the 1960's, Wolfhart Pannenberg has been recognized as one of the world's foremost Protestant theologians. Currently writing his magnum opus, a systematic theology in three volumes, Pannenberg intends to develop an ecumenical theology which will carry significance for Christians of all denominations. In this volume Stanley Grenz, who studied under Pannenberg in Munich, brings to the English-speaking audience the fullest available exposition of Pannenberg's developed theology, presented within the context of the debate his ideas have generated.

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Reading the Bible from the Eyes of Love

by R.E. Slater

It is wiser - and I think far better - that we learned to speak rightly of God as a God who loves at all the times. All other adjectives of an unloving God are not true of God's personage nor of God's actions. Rather, they mislead us into actions unlike a loving God, thereby justifying our sin, aggression, legalism, and religious zeal.

- re slater

Reading through Pannenberg's interview with Thomas Oord my attention was interrupted by the passage where he said:

"Theology should be based on the Scriptures - but it should be based upon a reading of the Scriptures through historical interpretation...."

I have been echoing this very same sentiment more firmly these past several years that any literal reading of the bible is to do a great disservice to Scripture.

We must always read the bible from:

(1) the (contextual) personal narrative of the acclaimed speaker (Moses, David, Jesus, Paul) which cultural preservation of theology has expressed through those figures, and

(2) including the contemporary existential narratives of those same cultural contexts from those same eras.

As example, Jesus spoke to those around him through their folklores and superstitions even as he himself was also part of the first century culture and could not speak otherwise unless he became what one would deem a 'mystic Christ' speaking of an era-specific future he could not have known based upon his religious education and geographic knowledge.

As such, I would consider all theology found in Scripture to be in its evolutionary stage of theological development - rather than a word-for-word verbatim stage of theological finality as expressed in the teaching of contemporary biblical literalism. 

For instance, whenever a Scriptural literary figure speaks of God as a Warmonger, Avenger, or Austere Judge (such as Moses or Jesus) these interpretive histories are (i) contextualizing the Image of God from within their own cultural biases and theological struggles which were (ii) later written down in Scripture to be extended and reinforced by church teachings (sic, Dante's speculative tome on the fires of Purgatory mixing in Greek and church legends of God's vindicating wrath).

Jesus certainly knew better, since he was God, but he taught those around Him using their own religious teachings while at the same time teaching of a God who loves at all times - if not passionately at all times, accounting therefore for God's anger, and angry reactions, to those priests and scribes claiming to be speaking, or acting, for God.

I also find it interesting that the Gospel of John and 1 John predominantly speak to a God of Love yet in the smaller Johannine tracts of 2, 3 John God is viewed as a Warrior God. Here are two Images of God - one loving and willing to sacrifice His life and the other returning from heaven to forcefully remove sin and ungodliness, hate and evil, from His creation.

How much of God might we infer from these literary scripts which are culturally bound in religious language and which are not? Further, they contribute to the pagan idea that God is divinely dipolar? Equally as loving as God is Avenging.

• How then can divine love be divinely unloving?

• How can divine vengeance be holy and righteous?

• Or the Christian Hell justified by a loving God?

I submit that humanity through the ages has it's image of God wrong and has leaned into the direction of fear and idolatry rather than into the more socially helpful and unifying idea of God as a God of love and redemption.

To be consistent, how then did the prophets, or Jesus, or the Apostles speak of God? Often in those same earthly Images of God embedded in the cultures they had inherited. And yet, those earlier beliefs about God are incongruous with a "GOD OF LOVE" we know today through Jesus. Though it seems right to carry over the judge (ala Moses) or war images (ala the prophets) of GOD, the God of Jesus is neither a Warmonger, Vindicator, or Wrathful Judge, though he is claimed to be in the bible and by the church. Images based in cultural fear and religious idolatry.

God is now known as the Prince of Peace, a Healer of the Nations, the Great High Priest who brings atoning salvation to the earth. God is a God of Love who is none of those OT images. A God whom Jesus pictures as always moved by love in all He does.

Whereas the church now should declare the end of God's wrath and judgment experienced by humanity and creation which comes as a natural result of humanity not loving one another (or even respecting nature). This God of wrath and judgment comes from the consequences of human (or creaturely) sin and evil... of which God has nothing to do with these things: "God is not a God of sin and evil."

More specifically, the consequences for not loving one another disspells it's energy into sinful thoughts and evil actions.  The very same things Christ warned us about many times over with prophetic heat and vigor. Yet Creedal Christianity AND the Traditions of the Church teach of a God of violence using as their dogma violent church rhetoric. This is not the God of redemption but a graven god made with earthly hands and mouldering temperment.

As conclusion, when reading the bible it must be read redactively as much as grammatically, historically, and contextually. There is no place for a literal reading of the bible unless we wish to continue in the misdirection and false teachings of who God is and what God expects. Jesus said to "love God and love your neighbor even as God loves you."

Though Jesus used other images of God this specific image of a God of love seems more consistent with God's purposes of creating, embracing, directing, and infilling creation. In all ways and by all deeds God loves and loves always. And with this line of thought Process Theology agrees. God is a God of Love and worthy to be worshipped, obeyed, and exampled through our lives, words, deeds, and activities. Amen.

R.E. Slater

February 20, 2022

Wolfhart Pannenberg's fuller quote in his interview with Thomas Oord:

"Now to von Rad. One of the weaknesses of Karl Barth was that Barth didn't have a real appreciation of Biblical exegesis, especially critical exegesis. Of course, he used the scripture quite a bit. But he had a very personal way of interpreting the Bible. I found by involving myself in historical critical exegesis of biblical writings that this wouldn't do. Theology should be based on the scriptures, of course, but it should be based upon a reading of the scriptures through historical interpretation. After all, the scriptures are historical documents, notwithstanding their being the word of God. Even that has to be settled upon their content as historical documents.

"I was most impressed by Gerhard von Rad's approach, because he interprets the scriptures, not only as a historian, but as a theologian. He was able to speak of the stories of the Old Testament as if they were about real life -- much more real than the secular life that we experience otherwise. The Old Testament has become an experience of reality for me through the teachings of Gerhard von Rad. His thesis, that God is acting with Israel and with all humanity in history, and that history is constituted by the acts of God, has influenced me more than any other thing that I learned as a student." - Wolfhart Pannenberg

How to Read the Bible - A New Hermeneutic, Part 7

How To Read The Bible - A New Hermeneutic

Part 7

What Works For Me

When Reading the Bible

by R.E. Slater

August 31, 2020

The Many Worlds of Hermeneutics

I originally wrote this piece as a single composition as I did not wish to have any of it read alone in its parts as each part is necessary for the other part. However, it is a long piece and so, with reservations, I have divided it up for the convenience of the reader. But for those who wish to read it as a whole I have left the original intact and titled parts 1-6. Thank you. - res

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The Transmission of the Bible

When reading ancient literature we discover the bible to be composed from many oral traditions reciting past narratives and experiences. In those oral stories come recited tales of tragedy, wisdom, sexual joy, laments, brokenness, thanksgiving, and a plethora of other emotions from which the human breast may burst into song, poetry, story, proverb,  humor, prophecy, and so forth.

As generations came and went, Jewish stories sharing their experience with God grew and grew even as they were told and retold from memory many times in word, poem, or song, all the while improvising along the way. But they could not be written down, recorded, taped, or digitized, as none of these memory saving tools were available. Basic alphabets, grammars, and literary rules in the early bible were in rough rudimentary stages of development. And even when an extant written language was operative still the history of both Israel and the church were dependent on reshaping oral narratives as they perceived them. Which means there was redaction going on between individuals, scribes, priests, rabbis, Christian disciples, and the early Church Fathers.

Consequently, the retelling of the ancient bible stories were never perfect. They held a few inconsistencies. Their details varied by the storyteller or by the listeners hearing them in the way they needed to hear them or wanted to hear them. And certainly without perfect recall. The story's themes, plot lines, central points, etc, all could easy mix in-an-out with other themes, plot lines, central points, etc.

And one would also expect the emphasis of a story to change via an injected or indescript nuanance, a detail or two, a tonal pitch, or an unintended vocal inflection here or there. The miracle of any ancient document, including the bible, is it came to be what it came to be. We have hoary traditions to thank for that however imperfect they may have been.

The upside to all this is that rather than concentrating on whether the bible is correct or not a simple believer, pastor, theolog or scholar, might approach the bible as a living, dynamic document open to interpretation about how, what, and why our Creator Redeemer is speaking to current generations of humanity. That doesn't mean playing fast-and-loose with the bible but becoming more perceptive about the who, what, why, and where God is taking us. As example, where once Arminianism spoke of agency, now it has bloomed into a larger, expanded version of God's open and relational experience of the world.

Let me suggest an additional aide to this discussion... the clever painter Norman Rockwell drew out many social deportments visualizing how people communicated with one another and what it might mean in the hearing and the telling. Take a look at these several pictures below and try to think through how a conversation is being heard by the group, by individuals within the group; how it might be perceived by personal or societal experiences and knowledge; and how communication changes with the circumstances involved.

  

 

Based upon the paintings above, and without the need to get Pentecostal or Charismatic, in many ways God is communicating with us in similar fashion through our daily lives. How? Can we just say infinitely? Many might say by the Spirit, by His Word, through His Son, through Himself, through the world, or very creation itself. But God's Word goes from God's mouth and runs through creation moment by moment. That very Word is Jesus. And it is through Jesus who reiterates God's message of love, hope, redemption, and resurrection.

Now imagine for a moment what telling a story might do. How it can create intrigue, mystery, share comedic events, teach morals/ethics, provide common sense lessons when working together, etc. For instance, the boy in Scripture was noted in a passage noticing if anyone stood behind him before flailing his axehead behind him when winding up to cut a log. Why? A well used axehead is notorious for coming off its handle. If they did it could hurt someone standing behind when flying through the air. Another biblical detail was when harvesting hard won crops. The community suggestion was made to have some care for the poor and for the beasts of the land. Hence, Ruth and her mother-in-law sustained themselves from the unharvested corners of the fields.

Imagine How We Tell Stories Today

As to modernday examples of oral transmission pick your favorite story you tell to friends. One you know well and have told and retold too many times. It's the kind of story which is well ingrained into your brain. Have you ever told that story in the same way every time without changing it? And when you do, do you make any changes that may make your story more-or-less true by improving it in some way? And finally, "do those changes reflect upon you, or your listening audience, as you tell it in the way you wish to tell it for the reasons you tell it in the way it is told?" (Forgive me, Yankee's legend Yogi Berra and I are sometimes linguist twins! ha ha).

The point is, if your telling your story in hot Phoenix, Arizona, or beautiful Los Angeles, California, or the urban streets New York City, or placid Miami, Florida, your story probably will change with location and audience. It's the same if you tell your story to the locals visiting the Dells of Wisconsin, or living in woodsy UP in Marquette, Michigan, or country music capital Nashville, Tennessee, or the harbortown environs of Baltimore, Maryland. It's the same old story but changed up for those who are listening. Why? Because your audience is oriented geographically and culturally to their locality. Not to yours. Thus you need to find common ground when sharing an incident.

Are the details any less true? Or are your improvisations lending more clarity to the time and circumstances you find yourself telling the revised story? Has the audience become more engaged when creating these minor (or major) additions to the story? Have the added embellishments make the story any less true for the locality your speaking to even as they may be less interesting or less true for another region you tell that same story in? These kind of literary additions are considered rhetorical devices. They usually increase the interest of a story being told by connecting familiar details of the locality you are presently visiting and reciting your story to. Ask any traveling preacher or evangelist, missionary or well-written author. Jesus did this all the time. So did the Apostles and disciples of the New Testament and the narratists and prophets of the Old Testament.

Telling Stories in the Past

Not long ago, as I read through Homer's Odyssey, I came across these two paragraphs which I thought might help in correlating the bible to other extant ways of telling a story at the time. Here they are:

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In this reprise of describing the legendary Homer and his "authorship" of the Illiad and Odyssey, the reader notices that Homer is doing what all storytellers had done in the past and were doing during his time (800-600 BCE). They were telling a familiar story in an interesting way so as to capture the imaginations of their audience.

(As an aside, I should state that Homer is not the original author of his tomes but a symbolic figure many associated with the ancient narratives perhaps because he was so good in their telling or had begun making a collection of all the stories surrounding the great warrior Achilles and trickster Odysseus who was both loved and hated by the gods. However it was, Homer cannot be found as an actual historical figure.)

During the early era of writing (about 1050 BCE or after re Attic Greek), the Greek city states of Sparta, Athens, and several others were collecting their national legends mixing them with perhaps older cultures such as the Mycenaeans  (1600-1100 BCE). These nationalized histories gave to a civilization their pride, cultural distinctives, social identity, and so forth. So too was Israel doing the same as far back as Abraham. The stories it told itself were stories which brought social and religious identity. From these stories nations rose and fell even as Israel did.

The following abbreviated articles from Wikipedia will help the modernday bible reader to appreciate the early culture of oral story telling and the nature of composition. Pretend Mycenae paralleled Israel's early development and Homer any of the early bible heroes and legends.... From these readings you'll be provided a better understanding of oral traditions and their collection.

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Mycenaean Greece

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Mycenaean Greece

Alternative names	Mycenaean civilization
Period	Bronze Age
Dates	c. 1600 – c. 1100 BC
Type site	Mycenae
Major sites	Pylos, Tiryns, Midea, Orchomenos, Iolcos
Characteristics	Palace-centric administrative system and culture Cyclopean masonry
Preceded by	Minoan civilization
Followed by	Greek Dark Ages

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Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1600–1100 BC. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system.^[1][2] The most prominent site was Mycenae, in the Argolid, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, Athens in Central Greece and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean and Mycenaean-influenced settlements also appeared in Epirus,^[3][4] Macedonia,^[5][6] on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the coast of Asia Minor, the Levant,^[7] Cyprus^[8] and Italy.^[9]

The Mycenaean Greeks introduced several innovations in the fields of engineering, architecture and military infrastructure, while trade over vast areas of the Mediterranean was essential for the Mycenaean economy. Their syllabic script, the Linear B, offers the first written records of the Indo-European Greek language, and their religion already included several deities that can also be found in the Olympic Pantheon. Mycenaean Greece was dominated by a warrior elite society and consisted of a network of palace-centered states that developed rigid hierarchical, political, social and economic systems. At the head of this society was the king, known as wanax.

Mycenaean Greece perished with the collapse of Bronze Age culture in the eastern Mediterranean, to be followed by the so-called Greek Dark Ages, a recordless transitional period leading to Archaic Greece where significant shifts occurred from palace-centralized to de-centralized forms of socio-economic organization (including the extensive use of iron).^[10] Various theories have been proposed for the end of this civilization, among them the Dorian invasion or activities connected to the "Sea Peoples". Additional theories such as natural disasters and climatic changes have been also suggested. The Mycenaean period became the historical setting of much ancient Greek literature and mythology, including the Trojan Epic Cycle.^[11]

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Homer

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For other uses, see Homer (disambiguation).

"Homeric" and "Homerus" redirect here. For other uses, see Homeric (disambiguation) and Homerus (disambiguation).

"Homeric" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Homerian.

Roman bust of Homer from the second century AD, portrayed with traditional iconography, based on a Greek original dating to the Hellenistic period^[1]

Homer (/ˈhoʊmər/; Ancient Greek: Ὅμηρος Greek pronunciation: [hómɛːros], Hómēros) is the presumed author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.^[2][3][4]

The Homeric Question – concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that "Homer" is best seen as a label for an entire tradition.^[4] It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.^[5]

The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.^[6][7] Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.^[8] From antiquity until the present day, the influence of Homeric epic on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.^[9] The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" – ten Hellada pepaideuken.^[10][11]

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Contemporary

Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad."[33][34][35][21] Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows a clear overall design, and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs.[21] It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions.[21] Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet.[21]

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards.[36] Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems.[37][38][21] A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date.[39] At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics.[37][38] Barry B. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus, who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι), and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.[40] Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod, and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later.[41][42][21] He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC.[21] At the other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC.[37][38][21]

"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros), "hostage" (or "surety"). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.[43][44]

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How Not To Read The Bible

When coming to the bible and reading its many stories and narratives it would be wrong to read each page like the last. Certainly the Westernized print of the bible in verse and by chapter; by book and literary section, contributes to reading the bible all in one way like we do with newpapers, magazines, journals, and books.

But it would be a mistake to read the bible in this way. The bible is a collection of ancient oral transmissions. Each pericope (word, phrase, half sentence, sentence, paragraph, etc) of the bible comes from a place and time we no longer can know. What was spoken in a sheep pasture out in the desert, or beside a water hole in a village are now gone. We can no longer know its source or original insight. As such, the bible has no one author but many authors. No one voice but many voices. This is as true in the OT as it is in the NT. The comfort is that each voice lends both difference and unity to the greater composition of biblical lore. Its what gives to the bible its distinctive historicity as versus a cultic tract or nascent sect.

As such, the bible is to be read as written by a host of authors, story tellers, narratists, singers, psalmists, poets, collected cultural wisdoms, communal laws, tribal moralities, and on and on. This also means that when reading the bible literally it is a big no-no. To read the bible literally is "literally" doing a great injustice to the biblical text. As modern (perhaps, Westernized) readers we assume too much, infer too little, catechize about God from our own thoughts, time and place, and read too much into the Word of God from those who are many times no better than we are in our education, training, and knowledge.

Similarly, we cannot force interpretive tools upon the bible. The Reformed tradition attests to the "literal-grammatical-historical-contextual" interpretive form of bible exegesis. However, it has limited itself to using this religiously-preferred tool across a breadth - or a complex - of ancient biblical cultures, thinking, superstitions, assumptions, ways of doing things, knowledge or lack of knowledge on subjects, family legends and generational lore.

Such tools may be helpful in keeping to the preferred religious teachings of God - who God is, and what God is doing in the world - but they are but a beginning point to interpreting the bible. The point to all this? Creeds and doctrines, dogmas and pulpiteering, are only as good as the information they have, or purport to hold. But when unloving actions and injustice come from the itinerant pulpits and ivory towers of the church then those who follow God know its time to move along.

As example, teaching the justification of "holy wars" probably isn't what God had in mind when reading of the violent sections of the bible. One might argue for "just wars" but it depends on whether the "warring" nation provoked such wars by raping its neighboring nation of its people and resources. When reading of a God of love it would seem we should better seek peace and wellbeing with one another. Which is not to say we are so trusting as to not be wise or beguiled by another, perhaps insidious, nation. Simply, we work through communication (diplomacy, if necessary), common earth projects together, resource sharing with one another, and all the while work at building up respect and comportment with fellow nations. Wars are a crude tool which must be abolished. They should never be pursued.

Conclusion

Lastly, reading the bible literally is literally not the way to do it. Or choosing a Catholic, Reformed, or Eastern Orthodox hermeneutic to "critique" the bible may be too limiting when interpreting to the bible. Then how does one read the bible??

Let me suggest reading the bible NOT through the lens of an interpretive tool but through the Author Himself. It sounds trite but its probably the least invasive, most common-sense way to practice one's religion. In this case, that of Christianity.

To read the bible through the lens of Jesus or the Love of God. When done, so much of what we teach or assume in the bible just isn't there. Knowing and teaching that God loves at all times pretty much destroys all the "biblical" stories of God judging mankind, putting families to death in violent sections of the bible, bringing pandemics, holocausts, tragedy upon sinners, and etc.

Reading the bible through the lens of "What Would Jesus Do?" (WWJD) changes our perspective and approach to the good news of the gospel. Even using the lens of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 25) given by Jesus teaches again and again that the Author of the bible is a God who loves and desires to bring goodness and wellbeing into all of His creation. This includes not only humanity but the earth as well.

The beauty of this hermeneutical proposition is that God has, through His own Being, as Messiah Jesus, shown to us what He wants. The God of Love has shared with us the commandment "To Love One Another". Nowhere did Jesus desire to lead an army or kill the ungodly. When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus who He was Jesus kept silent. Many of Jesus' followers wanted an insurrectionist who could lead them against Rome. But to the throne of Rome, aka Pilate, Jesus said not a word. He did not wish to lead a war against Rome. He did not come to kill but to love. And in hindsight, to die for our sins in loving atoning sacrifice.

The world we have at present is a world which can be changed in its societies and in its heart. But it begins through the regenerative or renewing process of loving one another and loving the creation God has set all around us. We have been given freewill agency in order to accomplish this difficult task. In Christ, our Savior and Lord, we are not minions to a fallen world or to sin and evil.

We are to drink from fresh wineskins and cast off the old wineskins. We bear the new wine of Christ and not the old wine of the world. We are to live life bespeaking regenerative words and actions. We are to be wellsprings of living water. We are to speak life and not death. Raising up the living and tearing down the dying. We are to learn to love and in love learn to pass God's love along to a broken world seeking love in the most unloving ways and places.

Peace, my brothers and sisters,

Be loved. Share Love.

R.E. Slater

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